On Monday, August 24, at the Annual Awards Luncheon at the Newport Conference, GMIS International presented 2015 Awards. Awards given were as follows:

The GMISOPA Award recognizes IT professionals whose meritorious performance is representative of service delivery excellence in the public sector. This is our oldest award, having first been presented in 1985. This year, our 31st addition to the GMISOPA Hall of Fame was 

 

Darshana Kanabar for the GMISOPA. Darshana is the Deputy Director of  the State of New Mexico’s Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO). In her eight years with the State of New Mexico, she has been instrumental in the entire lifecycle of multi-million dollar projects  including the State’s integrated eligibility system (ASPEN) and the State’s complete Business Process Reengineering and system replacement within our MVD. She was part of the core team and led the development and implementation of the State’s first EPMO, implementing new structures of adaptive project governance that has NM’s project success rate exceeding national averages, and she has led a grass roots initiative of cross jurisdictional collaboration in project management. She has overcome personal and professional challenges to lead the State’s IT initiatives and ensure strategic business outcomes. 

The GMIS Hershel Strickland Award is our most sentimental award. Once called the GMIS Ambassador Award, in 2008 this award was renamed the Hershel Strickland Award to honor the memory of Hershel and his genuine love of GMIS and for his tremendous contributions to strengthen our organization. This year we honored Erin Williams, Nevada GMIS Chapter President. She served as Treasurer of the Nevada GMIS Chapter from 2012-2014. She currently serves as the President of the Nevada Chapter (2014-present). In this role she has: worked to revitalize and grow the chapter to meet the needs of member organizations; established a working Executive Board; updated chapter bylaws; and executed the GMIS Chapter Affiliation Agreement. Her GMIS works in progress are: establishing the Nevada chapter as a Non-profit Cooperative Corporation Without Stock; planning quarterly presentations for employees of member organizations the first of which, held May 2015, featured the Nevada Highway Patrol’s Mobile Computing Project; and filling a major role in planning the annual G-Guard Conference (joint effort by the Nevada GMIS and Infragard Chapters)  entitled "Technology Takes Flight: Drones, Cloud Security, and Mobile Apps."

 

The GMIS Champion Chapter Award recognizes a state chapter for its GMIS activities and overall GMIS contributions. The state of Illinois won this year’s award for being one of our most active chapters.

The GMIS G2 Award recognizes a public sector agency whose exceptional G2 project serves as a shining example of how governments should be expanding their reach in their delivery of public services. Projects eligible for this award are government-to-citizen (G2C), government-to-business (G2B), and government-to-government (G2G).

In the Government-to-Government category, the Town of South Windsor, CT was recognized for their Multi-Agency Regional Cooperation Agreement. Towns of South Windsor, Coventry and Tolland have developed a regional cooperation agreement that has proven to be beneficial to all parties involved. The South Windsor Information Technology Department provides IT services to both Coventry and Tolland. 

In the Government-to-Citizen category,  Spotsylvania County, VA was recognized for their Public Safety Search and Rescue GIS Functionality. This GIS functionality provides the capacity to track progress, maintain overall situational awareness of search teams and provide ability to direct teams from the command center. This initiative allows search and rescue teams to more quickly and effectively utilize resources, and enhance the search and rescue efforts to a successful and positive outcome.

In the Government-to-Business category, the New Jersey Office of Information Technology (Division of Revenue & Enterprise Services) was recognized for their Cross Boundary Collaboration and Partnerships for Notary Processing.  The electronic service functionality within this project revolutionized the notary commissioning process for both new as well as existing notaries. Today, the applicant completes an electronic form that guides him/her through the application questions. The online form has features that help to reduce errors and allows for rapid completion. One example, the application includes a dropdown of legislators that are in the notary’s district. This allows the applicant to route the application electronically to the right official, eliminating the need for mailing.  The applicant pays with credit card or eCheck.  A message indicates when the application is completed, and then the system routes the application automatically to the selected legislator. The legislator receives an alert that an application was sent. Legislators use a secure login to view pending applications and electronically approve them.

 

The GMIS Best Practices Award represents trailblazers and risk takers who find innovative, exciting, and sometimes genius ways of delivering citizen services. The New Jersey Office of Information Technology is recognized for their   Cyber-Disaster Recovery Continuity of Operations Assessment Tool. New Jersey has created a new Cyber-Disaster Recovery-Continuity of Operations (Cyber-DR-COOP) Assessment survey tool that it is sharing with other States. The survey is a self-assessment questionnaire designed to identify strengths and weaknesses in agency preparedness in Cyber Security, IT Disaster Recovery, and IT Continuity of Operations, and provides data for comparisons of best practices. When the survey was first developed, no other assessment model existed with this type of methodology.

 

The GMIS Diamond Award is our highest honor bestowed on a GMIS vendor partner. It recognizes a GMIS partner, or partners, who have a long history of being a significant contributor to our organization during many of our annual conferences and also throughout the year. The Diamond winner(s) must also have a strong reputation of providing exceptional products and services to our GMIS membership. In 2015, the GMIS Diamond Award was presented to SHI and the Ruby Award to Tyler Technologies. Both awards are in recognition for their stellar professional reputations and for their many contributions to GMIS International.

 

Members recognized for their service to GMIS International on the Advisory Council included:

Cam Mathis, Chris Westgor, Clint Stanley, Dan Thomas, Daniel Morgan, Dean Obermeyer, Denise Potvin, Doug Taylor, Gene Rudy, Gray Cassell, Jim Lawson, Judy Demeranville, Karen Knight, Kimberly LaGrue, Laura Gonzalez, Marc Thorson, Rick Bareuther, Rick Lambert, Rob Petty, Russ Martin, Sherri Flynn, Sue Farni, Walt Hansen, Wendy Schmidle, and Will Lyons.

 

GMIS International congratulates all of the award winners for 2015! We encourage all agencies to start thinking of potential nominees for the upcoming membership year. Being recognized is a big plus for the individual, their department and their agency.